English Literature
Contact Donovan Rees or Zach Larsen
British literature and history from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century, with an emphasis on poetry, fiction, and drama.
We usually have a selection of literary works from the STC and Wing period (i.e. before 1701), and a broad range of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century fiction and poetry, particularly the Romantics. We also have a selection of historical manuscripts, prints and broadsides, and works in translation.
Among important works which have passed through our hands are the editor's presentation copy of Milton's Lycidas, Swift's Modest Proposal, the autograph draft of Byron's She walks in beauty, the autograph manuscript of Jane Austen's only play Sir Charles Grandison, Dickens’s copy of Vanity Fair, Trollope's classical library, and, over the years, some fifty Shakespeare First Folios.
-
VALERIUS FLACCUS, Gaius, and Louis CARRIO, translator.
Argonauticon … libri VIII, a Ludovico Carrione Brugensi...
Antwerp, Christopher Plantin, [15 July] 1565.
First edition, a very attractive copy, of Louis Carrio’s precocious – and perhaps overconfident – recension of the first-century Argonautica of Valerius Flaccus.
£1250
-
[BYRON, George Gordon Noel, Lord.]
AUCHER, Paschal. A Grammar Armenian and English ...
Venice, at the Press of the Armenian Academy, 1819.
First edition, scarce, of Byron’s Armenian Grammar, ‘the first English-language attempt to explain the structures of classical Armenian’, also containing ‘Byron’s only surviving verse translation of Armenian poetry’ (Rizzoli), but probably published without his knowledge.
£3250
-
PIOZZI, Hester Lynch.
British Synonymy; or, an Attempt at regulating the Choice of Words in familiar Conversation. Inscribed, with...
London: Printed for G. G. and J. Robinson … 1794.
First edition of a fascinating collection of short essays on synonyms, intended as a help to her husband and his foreign friends. Mrs. Piozzi began work on her Synonymy in early 1792, and by August was hard at the grindstone: ‘ten pages o’ Day copying, besides a little Composition now and...
£950
-
[BERKENHOUT, John].
Clavis anglica Linguæ botanicæ; or, a botanical Lexicon; in which the Terms of Botany, particularly those...
London: Printed for the Author. Sold by T. Becket, and A. de Hondt … and Mess. Hawes, Clarke, and Collins … 1764.
First edition, dedicated to John Hope of the University of Edinburgh, and written with the assistance of Arthur Lee of Virginia, winner of the Hope Medal in 1763.
£325
-
VENERONI, Giovanni.
The Complete Italian Master; containing the best and easiest Rules for attaining that Language … Newly...
London, J. Nourse, 1763.
First edition thus, revising an earlier translation of Le maitre italien of 1711, which was not only ‘out of print’ but ‘in many respects inaccurate’ (Preface). The translator’s preface acknowledges the work of foreign editors since the second edition of 1729 and describes some...
£750
-
SAUSSURE, Ferdinand de.
Cours de linguistique générale.
Lausanne & Paris, Payot, 1916.
First edition of this seminal textbook on linguistics by Ferdinand de Saussure, fundamental to the development of structuralism and semiotics, introducing distinctions between signified and signifier as well as language systems and speech.
£575
-
VIGER, François.
De praecipuis graecae dictionis idiotismis … accessit praeterea huic editioni observationum non inutilium qualecunque...
London, G. Godbid for William Shrowsberey, 1678.
Second London edition of this treatise on Greek idiom by the French Jesuit François Viger (1590–1647).
£175
-
NONIUS MARCELLUS.
De proprietate sermonum. Iam demum innumeris locis restitutus, multis locupletatus, ope vetustissimorum codicum,...
Antwerp, Christophe Plantin, 1565.
First critical edition of this grammar and dictionary of Latin from the later Roman Empire, a significant witness to earlier texts now lost, from the extensive library of the Earls of Macclesfield at Shirburn Castle.
£450
-
JOHNSON, Samuel.
A Dictionary of the English Language: in which the Words are deduced from their Originals, and illustrated in...
London, W. Strahan for J. and P. Knapton, T. and T. Longman, C. Hitch and L. Hawes, A. Millar, and R. and J. Dodsley, 1755.
First edition of ‘the most amazing, enduring and endearing one-man feat in the field of lexicography’ (PMM), this copy preserving 19D and 24O both in the first state.
£20000
-
BREREWOOD, Edward.
Enquiries touching the Diversity of Languages, and Religions through the cheife Parts of the World …
London, Printed [by Eliot’s Court Press] for John Bill, 1614.
First edition. Brerewood, professor of astronomy at Gresham College, was a scholar in many fields who published nothing in his own lifetime (he died in 1613). Enquiries, seen through the press by a nephew, explores the spread of ancient, eastern, and modern languages, discusses the...
£3000
-
BUXTORF, Johannes.
Epitome grammaticae Hebraeae, breviter & methodice ad publicum Scholarum usum proposita. Adjecta succincta de...
London, Roger Daniel, 1653.
Second edition (first Cambridge, 1646) of Buxtorf’s Hebrew grammar to be printed in England, here preserving a fragment of a sixteenth-century English-French grammar as endpapers and with a student’s manuscript Hebrew transliterations.
£650
-
GIGLI, Mariano.
Esperimento del nobile giovinetto Francesco Piazzi d’anni dieci non compiuti sulle sette lingue italiana, francese,...
Milan, Società tipografica de’ classici italiani, 1818.
First and only edition, rare, of a series of 450 translation exercises in French, Spanish, English, German, Latin, Greek, and Italian, posed to the ten-year-old linguistic prodigy Francesco Piazzi by his tutor as the culmination of his highly experimental method of linguistic instruction.
£1250
-
MORI, Ascanio de’.
Giuoco piacevole.
Mantua, Giacomo Ruffinello, 1575.
First edition of an uncommon Renaissance collection of tales in prose and verse, set in the Lombard city of Brescia during the Carnival of the ‘prosperous and peaceful’ year 1566, employing the narrative frame canonised by Boccaccio in the Decameron, though with pointedly opposed features.
£950
-
WALKER, John.
Hints for Improvement in the Art of Reading ...
London, Printed for the Author, and sold by T. Cadell ... G. Robinson ... and T. Becket ..., 1783.
First edition. The future lexicographer John Walker (1732-1807) left grammar school and then absconded from an apprenticeship to join a succession of provincial theatre companies. Garrick hired him in 1754 and for the next four years he performed a number of mainly minor parts at Drury Lane. In 1758...
£650
-
URCEO, Antonio [or Codro].
Hoc Codri volumine haec continentur. Orationes, seu sermones ut ipse appellabat. Epistolae. ...
Bologna, Giovanni Antonio Benedetti, 7 March 1502.
First edition of a quintessential piece of Italian humanism, annotated by a sixteenth-century reader particularly interested in the philology of the texts.
£3000
-
BARONE, Giuseppe.
IA-Z Pam, le baton du muet, (traduit du chinois)... extrait du muséon.
Louvain, Ch. Peeters, 1882.
First separate edition, rare (apparently one other copy known), almost certainly printed for presentation, of this transliteration of a Chinese play with parallel French translation, which first appeared in the French journal Muséon. Barone’s article seeks to introduce a French audience to the great...
£250
-
[GO Keitai 吳啓太 and TEI Eihō 鄭永邦.]
官話指南 [Guanhua zhinan; ‘A Guide to Mandarin’].
Kiukiang [Jiujiang], Central China Press, 1893.
Very rare edition of this guide to Mandarin printed by a Methodist missionary press in Kiukiang (Jiujiang).
£1750
-
BOLZANIO, Urbano or URBANUS BELLUNENSIS.
Institutionum in linguam Graecam grammaticarum, libri duo …
Basel, Johann Walder, September 1535.
Basel edition of this popular grammar commissioned and first published by Aldus in 1497. Bolzanio’s full exploration of the Greek language was the first book in which the principles of Greek grammar were explained in Latin – after the publication of the all-Greek grammar of Constantinus Lascaris....
£2000
-
[SINO-VIETNAMESE.]
‘朱柏盧家訓 Instructions familières du Dr Tchou-Pou-Lou’.
[Vietnam?, late nineteenth century.]
A set of manuscript lessons and exercises in classical Chinese, partly unique and likely compiled by Frenchmen in late nineteenth-century Vietnam.
£3500
-
[WALEY, Arthur.]
康熙字典 [Kangxi zidian; ‘The Kangxi Dictionary’].
Shanghai, Dianshizhai for Jiujingzhai, Guangxu 22 [1894].
Nineteenth-century Shanghai edition of the Kangxi Dictionary, this set with an autograph note from the great Sinologist and translator Arthur Waley identifying the text for a previous owner.
£1250